Breaking a leg

[Rhatkinson]

I echo Bill's comments entirely, especially with respect to Jones. As I stated earlier, Jones was in a unique position to know which story was baloney and which was the truth, and he had absolutely no reason to lie about his conclusion.

As to Dave's information that Kauffman told him that there were "seeds"/evidence of the Ford's break even before the finding of Booth's diary, that is news to me as there is zero mention of these "seeds" anywhere in Kauffman's research. Look at this taken directly from his own website:

In the late 1970's or early 1980's, when Mike was going through the eyewitness accounts, he noticed something: Not a single eyewitness reported seeing Booth limp as he fled across the stage after he shot President Abraham Lincoln. The more Mike looked at the testimony, the more the evidence pointed to the idea that Booth had not broken his leg in Ford's Theatre. The evidence revealed Booth's leg was broken at a later point in his escape, when his horse stumbled and fell on him.
As John Wilkes Booth escaped into the April night, authorities had no idea that he had broken his leg. Eyewitnesses in Washington, such as Sgt. Cobb and the people at Ford's had not reported seeing him limp or noted that he seemed to be in pain. (Those who remembered a limp, remembered it after Booth died and the "facts" became known). John M. Lloyd and Dr. Samuel Mudd told detectives that "a stranger" had complained of a broken leg, but it was not until Mrs. Mudd gave authorities the boot that her husband had cut off of Booth's leg, that any hard evidence came to light. The War Department then narrowed its focus to "lame man" sightings, and one of those led directly to Booth's capture.

So, how did Booth break his leg? Booth offered a clue in his own version of the shooting, which he recorded in his diary (the entire entry is below, right), "in jumping, broke my leg." Everyone took "in jumping" to mean when he jumped from the Presidential box. It could be argued that Booth was referring to another jump--a jump that caused his horse to stumble and fall.

Below are the major point's of Mike's argument. Many are excerpted from "Assassin on the Run," published by Blue and Gray Magazine in June 1990, while others are from the In the Footsteps of an Assassin, published in 2012.
Eyewitnesses at Ford''s Theatre gave no indication of the accident, except to say that the assassin landed on the stage off-balance after leaping from the Presidential Box. The more specific accounts say that Booth fell on his right hand and knee, though it was the left leg that was broken.
During his escape, Booth told about a dozen people he had broken his leg when his horse stumbled and fell on him. He even said this to some people (such as John Lloyd) who knew about the assassination.
David Herold backed up the stumbling horse story, adding that he himself was there and helped Booth mount up again right after the accident.
When Booth mounted his horse in Baptist Alley (and had trouble with the skittish mare), his left leg bore all the weight and tortion of his body, yet he indicated no pain at the time and, and later, doctors did not report seeing signs of this trauma to the injury.
Sgt. Cobb at the Navy Yard Bridge, who saw Booth 20 minutes after the shooting, noted that the assassin's voice was smooth and that he appeared at ease. Everyone else, from Surrattsville down (after the horse falling incident), said that Booth's voice was cracked in pain.
Dr. Mudd once said that Booth's pants were muddy when he arrived on the morning of April 15.
Thomas David, a farmhand at Dr. Mudd's, told detectives that Booth's mare had a badly swollen left front shoulder and a fresh cut on its leg. Davis fed and cared for the horse during Booth's visit.

Booth's entire diary entry reads, “I struck boldly and not as the papers say. I walked with a firm step through a thousand of his friends, was stopped, but pushed on. A Col. Was at his side. I shouted Sic semper before I fired. In jumping broke my leg. I passed all his pickets, rode sixty miles that night, with the bone of my leg tearing the flesh at every jump. I can never repent it, though we hated to kill; Our country owed all her troubles to him, and God simply made me the instrument of his punishment. The country is not what it was. This forced union is not what I have loved. I care not what becomes of me. I have no desire to out-live my country. This night (before the deed), I wrote a long article and left it for one of the Editors for the National Intelligencer, in which I fully set forth our reasons for our proceedings. He or the Govmt”

Of course, one could argue that eyewitness testimony has flaws and adrenalin could have enabled Booth to move so quickly across the stage if he did, indeed, have an injury. Perhaps, the idea the Booth was undone by the American flag is simply too good to let go. The facts, however, support the claim that Booth broke his leg when his horse fell on him.

As you can see, Kauffman fails to mention ANY evidence of the Ford's break except for Booth's diary. However, Kauffman knows this is a fatal flaw to his argument because the Wood report and its conclusion that the leg WAS broken at Ford's. The only response to this from Kauffman theorists is to say that Wood must have assumed a Ford's break because of the people who saw Booth stumble. Read Kauffman's telling of those witnesses again and ask yourself whether anyone in their right mind would conclude such a stumble (on the wrong leg even!) was conclusive proof of the Ford's break. It is a very weak argument at best. Frankly, it is beyond debate that there was evidence of the Ford's break long before Booth's diary was ever found. Thus, Booth could not have been the sole architect of this grandeous exaggeration. What that other evidence was, we don't know (I personally think my Swann theory makes the most sense, but I am biased